Zack Snyder Talks Batman’s Willingness to Kill in ‘Batman v Superman’

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is out. If you haven’t seen it yet, I suggest you look elsewhere as this article will provide a minor spoiler regarding the movie.

Are you ready? In the flick, Batman does, in fact, kill. In his pursuit of Superman and justice, you will find that he does rack up some deaths. Knowing of the backlash that will likely occur from breaking Batman’s most important rule, director Zack Snyder had a response lined up. In an interview with Hey U Guys, he explained that he attempted to go more towards the grey area when it comes to killing people. Bats has, in some cases, simply allowed people to die.

Snyder explains:

“So, I tried to do it by proxy. Shoot the car they’re in, the car blows up or the grenade would go off in the guy’s hand, or when he shoots the tank and the guy pretty much lights the tank [himself]. I perceive it as him not killing directly, but if the bad guy’s are associated with a thing that happens to blow up, he would say that that’s not really my problem.”

He also cites multiple times where Christopher Nolan’s or Tim Burton’s Batman have potentially killed people in their movies. At the same time, he expresses that he lifted a scene right out of Dark Knight Returns that showed Old Bats killing somebody.

“A little more like manslaughter than murder, although I would say that in the Frank Miller comic book that I reference, he kills all the time. There’s a scene from the graphic novel where he busts through a wall, takes the guy’s machine gun…I took that little vignette from a scene in The Dark Knight Returns, and at the end of that, he shoots the guy right between the eyes with the machine gun. One shot.”

The next line of that quote contains a spoiler of how he ended that scene, but rest assured, if you have not seen it yet, Batfleck does not shoot someone in the head.

Although I strongly disagree with Snyder’s decision to allow Batfleck to kill people, I know that I have to accept it. We can’t change the fact that this is the Batman we were gifted with, so it’s best to resign ourselves to it. I just hope that Snyder justifies Batman’s change in rationale from here on out.

Adam Poncharoensub is a blogger, movie critic, and Born-Again Batman fan. When he’s not chained to his desk writing, he likes to spend his days spreading the gospel of the Dark Knight in the treacherous suburbs of Miami or working under Dropping Loads Productions, where he co-hosts a comedy podcast and produces sketches.